


My Diary

by abluevixen (knightofbows)



Series: | January 2016 Prompt Challenge | [14]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Established Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Married Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 10:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6151291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightofbows/pseuds/abluevixen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles has been keeping journals for ages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Diary

Scott gives it to him shortly after his mother dies. It’s small, six inches wide and eight inches tall, the page edges are a nauseatingly bright shade of highlighter green, and streaks of the red clearance sticker are still visible despite Mrs. McCall’s efforts to scratch them away. Despite these questionable characteristics, what worry Scott when he hands it to Stiles are its orange and fuchsia chevron pattern and the bold letters of “DIARY,” still visible through the silver tape and between Scott’s markered, “JOURNAL.”

“What’s this for?” Stiles asks around a runny nose and puffy eyes. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t stop crying. His cheeks have become so used to their slippery tracks, he doesn’t even feel them anymore.

“Mom says it sometimes helps to write how you feel,” Scott explains. “So I got you this, so you can put your feelings in it. No one has to read it. It’s just for you.”

“Thanks, Scotty.”

Stiles’ addresses his first entry to the journal itself, and tells it how amazing his best friend, Scott, is, because he got him a journal. He promises to write it in all the time, just like his mom used to before she became too weak to hold a pen.

 

###

 

Stiles never changes format through the years—never blogs or videos himself emoting—but he burns through notebooks and journals.

He fills the pages consistently, sometimes with quotes, sometimes with amateur poetry. Sometimes he prints out graphics or photographs and glues them to the bound pages. He fills the notebooks and wears them thin, taping pages back in place when the binding becomes flimsy. Sometimes he reinforces the covers with stickers or colorful duct tape. He fills a small box with his notebooks, his journals, his musings, the development of his self.

His handwriting evolves, from jagged, unsure lines, to swirling loops when he learns cursive, and eventually to something somewhere in between the two; a formation of letters and words, some connected in stylistic short-cuts that let the thoughts on the page keep pace with the thoughts in his head.

And when he can’t be strong for Scott or Lydia or his father, he admits it only on paper, in a book no one will ever see, buried in the chaos of his room. He tells the pages he’s scared. He tells the pages he doesn’t think he’ll survive. He tells the pages he wishes his mom was there to make him feel better.

Ink smears with tears when his eyes burn and wiping his face will only interrupt his writing. The pages ripple where his sweaty wrist presses, too anxious to function without first writing something, anything, even if he fists the pen and makes broad, angry strokes. Corners stain orange where carelessly scrubbed fingers leaf through pages, DNA evidence of his violent life.

 

###

 

“What’s this?” Derek asks. They’re digging through the top selves of Stiles’ office closet. Since deciding to turn it into a dedicated guest room, they realized Stiles owned a lot more stuff than either of them remember him bringing into the relationship. But they were both adults—they could do to part with some unnecessary possessions.

“Oh, uh,” Stiles laughs, nervous. The box is much bigger than any he’d had while living with his dad. Meeting and falling in love with Derek has given him so much material, his journals have almost doubled in number in seven years. “Those are my journals.”

“A whole box of them?” Derek teases. He stretches to pull the box down and sets it in the middle of the office floor. The rest of the room is in complete disarray, but he nudges other items with sweeps of his foot to make space for them to sit.

Stiles shrugs and sits opposite his husband, the box between them. “I’m very verbose.”

“Never would have guessed.” Derek opens the folded cardboard flaps of the box and carefully removes each journal. They’ve been jostled over their various moves and Stiles’ desperate bouts of nostalgia, but they’re dated. Stiles’ long-stroked numbers are discrete where they hover in the top right hand corner of each cover. Derek puts them in piles by year. He never asks Stiles what he writes about, only offers himself as confidant instead of blank pages. Sometimes Stiles accepts the offer. Others, he declines.

Stiles laughs again, and helps Derek organize the books.

“Oh, here’s one from around the time we met,” Stiles says, grinning. He flips through the pages and finds the entry he’s searching for. “ _As my girl T. Swifty would say, He’s so tall and handsome as hell. He’s so bad, but he does it so well._ ”

“You used Taylor Swift song lyrics to describe me?” Derek deadpans. “I’m…not at all flattered. No. Definitely not.”

“This was around the time I thought you were a murderer, by the way,” Stiles clarifies. He licks his finger and turns a few more pages. “I also talk about how it felt like I was in a bad rom-com because I kept running into you everywhere. This was shortly after Scott was bitten, and you were trying to get us to trust you.” He skips ahead a few entries. “And then you were shot.”

Derek looks up from where he’d been purposely avoiding Stiles’ gaze under the guise of sorting. “And…?”

“I thought you were going to die, Derek,” Stiles says. “I didn’t even know you that well, but I knew I couldn’t bear to see you die. You were…God, it was hard to see you like that. I’ve seen you worse, since, but it’s never been easy, ya know?” He closes the book with a snap and adds it to the appropriate pile.

Derek nods because he understands, and Stiles knows he does. They continue sorting the journals in silence until the box is nearly empty. Then Derek pulls out a battered book with orange and fuchsia chevrons, and lime green pages. “What’s the story behind this one?”

Stiles snorts, then takes it from Derek’s reverent grasp. “This is the one that started it all.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” Stiles flips it open and chuckles at his atrocious handwriting. “Scott gave it to me right after my mom died. Told me to write about my _feelings_.”

“Your first journal,” Derek says, a little impressed.

“My first _diary_ ,” Stiles corrects, then he peels back the silver tape to show Derek the label Scott used to hide the book’s true title. Soon, they’re both laughing. “My very first diary.”

“What made you keep writing?” Derek asks, sincere. “I get that it’s a coping method, but once things quieted down…”

Stiles shrugs. “My mom always kept a diary, ever since she was a girl. There’s a whole box of them in my dad’s attic. Scott gave me this after she passed. It just seemed right to keep doing it, ya know?”

“ _Dear Diary_ ,” Derek jokes, gentle, to bring Stiles back from teetering on the edge of melancholy. “ _Today, my husband and I organized your older sister diaries. And let me tell you, I’m so happy I put a ring on it! He’s such a dream boat…”_

Stiles squawks indignantly and thumps Derek in the chest with one of the heavier, studier journals from sometime while he was in college.

Later that night, he orates as he writes, loud enough for Derek to hear, “ _I don’t care what Derek says, Diary, he is NOT a dream boat. But I did put a ring on it, so I guess he’s on to something._”

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on tumblr: [foxtricks](http://foxtricks.tumblr.com/)


End file.
